Did anyone here actively collect basketball in the mid 90s? I know that some may not have started yet then, but this was a time when exchanges, main-in deals and the like were becoming quite popular. Lots of sets had special NNO cards, commemorative one card insert "sets", tributes or redemptions/exchanges that you could get with randomly inserted trade cards, through magazine subscriptions and sometimes via mail with wrappers or some money.

One that really stood out and blew my mind at the time was the Skybox Emotion Grant Hill Skymotion Dunk card. This card required you to send in $25 to get it and you may have also needed a couple wrappers to boot. I couldn't believe it when I saw the deal. I wanted it so bad, but there was no way I was going to pay $25 for a mail-in card! I refused and never got one when they were new.

They are still not an easy find today and I don't think I have ever noticed one for much less than around $50. The card itself is not all that impressive now, but at the time it was groundbreaking. I eventually added one to my collection as I wanted all of those special cards, but these types of cards got overly popular, were issued in most new sets and became too hard to keep track of after a while and I stopped collecting every single one they offered not too long after.